It is very important to know rightly for every individual what should be the phases of life.
If you get to know in the right age then living life will be much easier and more meaningful.
Many people after the age 60 to 70 are saying now they understand the real meaning of life but if they get to know at an early age then they can enjoy life with happiness & satisfaction and their life will be more enjoyable.
Before knowing the phases of life few things we need to understand.
What is the average duration of life?
In India, the average duration of life is around 85 years. Now in these 85 years of life, we are passing through many phases of life like childhood, young age, middle age and the old age. Our perception is that childhood age is from 0-18 years, young age is from 18-35 years, middle age is 35 to 58 years and old age is from 58 to 85 years or can say end of life.
By this perception, we are considering that at age 18 year we should start independent life or life with our own decisions and after age 58 we should retire and live a peaceful life with no work. Another perception is that one should retire by age 58 or maximum by 60. These all numbers are engraved in our mind in such a way that if we say I will start my career at age 12 or can say retire by 40-45 then it sounds weird.
In reality, a large population in India specially educated class people are not able to start life at age 18 because to do specialize education or get a job/earning stream they are reaching at age 25, so there is a delay of around 5-7 years at starting. At the time of retirement age 58 or 60, they are not able to retire due to financial liabilities and responsibilities of the family which pushes them to work till age 65 and sometimes till age 70. Many people are working even after age 70 not by choice but by force due to their liabilities or they don’t have money to sustain life.
Why this is happening?
We are in a country where the population is around 140+ crore in which people of age below 15 are around 35 crore and above age 60 are around 15 crore. If we go by the present sentiment which defines the working age 18 to 60 then around 90 crore people need employment or working to nurture the family.
Out of these 90 crore people around 40% don’t work for money like housewife, working for social work voluntary, seriously ill / disabled, etc.
So around 55 crore people are doing jobs, doing business and looking for work.
These numbers are large and giving employment from age 18-60 (42 years) is becoming difficult for any government.
If you go into details you will find these large numbers of people are earning money for themselves and their families. The main reason is that most people are struggling to get the basic necessities of life like shelter, food, kid’s education, medical and daily recurring necessary expenses. Most people are not able to achieve in their 40-45 years of working life and still remain poor or reach till middle class or retain the position of middle class. Even after age 45-50, their condition remains same.
Then what should be the ways?
If you look closely, people who are working for money and doing either a Job or business but directly or indirectly are serving something to the community / people in the form of products or services.
There are more than enough people are to cater for these services/ products because of that there is big gap between available people Vs job/business. Requirement of the people are much lower in most professions because of that very much higher competition in any income stream either in jobs or in business. The vacancies are less and applicants are multiple times higher.
To mitigate this issue one of the ways that a large population can be diverted into building the nation or serving the community on voluntary basis. This diversion should start by age 45 to 50 so people of age 18 to 45 years can get much higher opportunities in jobs and business. And same time these diversion of the people of age above 45 can be utilized in building the nation/community/people.
But why do people do voluntary service after age 45?
In India, major issue is that there is no social security cover even after paying hefty income taxes & other taxes like GST. Our basic necessities are food, shelter, medical treatment, education, least money for survival. These all very basic necessities are must for survival and in India no one is giving such cover without money. To secure these basic necessities people are saving and spending money on these necessities and left with no money or not enough money. On the other hand other than these necessities, they need money to upgrade lifestyle and entertainment.
So people are not able to come out from this rat race and not thinking beyond necessities, lifestyle, lifestyle up-gradement and entertainment which is more look life living for self. These circumstances make people more selfish and not allowing them to do service to the community/people on voluntary basis. Because of that everyone has created their own world with struggling life and not helping each other. They are busy in building their own world.
So what can be probable ways?
If by any chance, part of these large people come out from rat race by age 45 and work for the community/people on a voluntary basis then the life of these people after age 45 will be less stressful & more enjoyable and the same time these people can pursue the profession which they love most, they are good at it and it will beneficial for the community/ people.
Exchanging skill without any higher expectation will uplift society in a large way and same time will help people of above age 45 to live peacefully and happily. In other hand it will create opportunities to coming young generation in jobs/ businesses those are of the age bracket of 18-45.
If people can able to achieve financial security and large wealth by age 45 then coming out from their rate race will be much easier. Empowering with financial security and wealth will help them to think beyond money and pave path to a meaningful life.
So what should be the probable phases of life?
This is our life which cannot be defined by rules but to create ease in life we can explore the ways by which our life should be less stressful and more enjoyable.
We should understand one thing that life is not meant to become workaholic lifelong. Life is to live gracefully and with ease. This will happen when we start enjoying life at an early age and do the things that help to build a large wealth at an early age ( before age 45) and same time build a mindset to start serving to the communities/people.
The probable phases of life are…..
1. Age 0-18 – For basic education and learning culture & manners
This phase of life is to grow, to become healthily, to learn discipline, to learn our culture, to learn manners and to focus on basic education. This all together will built a strong, cultured, mannered, disciplined and intelligent explorer person.
2. Age 18-24 – For Graduation & Specialization
After getting basic education at around age 18, people should do creative works and earn some amount parallel to their higher studies which will help them to decide profession by age 24. Once they start earning by work during these 7 years starting from age 18 to 24, they get to know many things about the professions which will help them to decide the profession of their choice or liking by age 24.
3. Age 24 -45 – For Profession (Job/ Business)
In this phase, which is of after age 24 till age 45 (around 20 years) people should work hard to learn and earn to built large money & wealth for self so after 45 the saved corpus/ wealth can give this much returns so they can sustain comfortable and enjoy the life rest of the life from returns of invested corpus and the same time the saved corpus will be like financial security.
It will be idle, if you chose the profession which you like most and of your interest. Excellence in the profession will help to build a person with right knowledge which will be helpful for community/ people. Sharpening skills during this time is very important which can be utilized further for innovation, invention and creation.
4. Age 45- 60 – Serving for communities/ people
This should be the time when one should start a life for fulfillment, happiness, satisfaction and with ease.
Experience of almost 27+ years (starting from your age 18 to 45) in term of profession, relationship, socializing, knowing people, etc. are more than enough to make you more reasonable, mature, tough and most importantly should take you out from most of the greediness.
This all makes you a balanced person which is now make you to move in life with ease, compassion, maturity and having ability to understand others.
This time should be precious time and the main motive should be to serve for community/people and enjoy a peaceful life. This serving may be in from of research, invention, building organizations, leading teams, spreading beneficial schemes/ opportunity information to the people, giving free education guidance and building a systems which can help human life for all ages of people and always your thought process should to serving community /people either you will continue with your job/business or do something on voluntary basis which is helpful for human being.
This all will happen when the intention should be right and intention to work should be without greed and this culture should be engraved at early age.
5. Age 60 & above – Serving for communities / people (Limited time)
This should be the time when one should work partly for the community/ people and more for self to enjoy every moment of life with ease with your family & society.
In this duration one should be enough mature to understand life and explore the way to live peaceful and happy life.
It is true that defining life is not in anybody’s hands as life moves in its own way, not even we can design the life but defining life phases will help humans to live a meaningful life with enjoy every phase of life.
Age gives you experiences and makes you more mature and change your thinking towards life. If your experiences are good then you’re thinking towards life will be entirely different which generally not in our hands, but what is in our hands is we should not impact our life from bad experiences.
Implementation of these phases of life is possible in India?
It is a harsh reality that most of the people in India are struggling to get even basic necessities of life like shelter, food, kid’s education, basic medical facility and money for daily recurring necessary expenses. If by any chance they manage the basic necessities then they are running behind up-liftment & entertainment in life.
As most of the people are from nuclear family so other than themselves, no one is helping them to achieve it. The burden on an individual is much higher than the capacity hence people’s life is becoming miserable and they are always in trap of rat rate whole life and not able to think beyond necessities, up-liftment & entertainment which only can be achieved by money so money is now becomes the prime centre of life. And this chase of money is not allowing us to think for life beyond money.
We are always blaming government or govt. policies for our petty situation but if you look closely in such a large population how many people are working towards building life of others? Since there is no support for an individual, the individuals are struggling in their own life.
So is there any other way that an individual will get some help from someone other than the government?
It is not that people are not working for individuals. It is very surprising even presently people are working for the community/people either by job or business, providing service or product but on a paid basis. Our present intention is to serve community/ people on a paid basis or can say to earn money for ourselves and this we are doing continuously for a longer period 40+years of the span of our life starting from age 18 to 65 years which makes humans more selfish.
No one is waking up from this selfishness and coming forward to help others on a voluntary basis as everyone is busy building something for themselves & own family.
The main reason is that the present earnings are not able to fulfill our desires and also not even anyone is guiding us on what should be the limit for the desires and till what age we should pursue our desires.
The harsh reality is that few luxury goods are showcase us as rich but in the other real side most of the things built on debts or people are deadly working to pay the debts by compromising family life, time, health, and many more such thing which makes human life more stressful and unsatisfactory. And these all things people are doing lifelong without any meaningful intention.
Due to this, implementing these phases in life looks difficult. This mindset needs to be changed and it will happen when people will give more priority to a meaningful life. Just working for necessities, upliftment and entertainment is not life.
What are the possible ways?
If people start working with the intention to uplift others, then providing services/ goods will be largely beneficial to the individuals.
The team leaders/businessmen who are running companies, corporations, corporate, organizations, start-ups and business owners can work with intention to uplift their workers/clients keeping profits intact. The prime intention should uplift the society with ensuring profits.
Other side if a large number people come out from the rate race by the age 45 and work with intention to uplift society then making a major change in an individual’s life at the root level can be much easier.
Only a positive intention of a person can help largely to uplift other individual’s life and here your experience & expertise can help. Channelizing experience and expertise for people other than doing a job or business will largely help an individual.
What are the benefits of proposed phases of life?
- A major benefit is one can live life with ease after age 45.
- You can design you own life after 45 what you want to do.
- Younger generation age bracket 18-45 will get more opportunity in jobs and businesses.
- Creating large wealth will help to live life after age 45 with ease and allow people to do things which will be benefited to society.
- Helping on voluntary basis will give new meaning in life and help to live meaningful life without time bond job/business.
- If after age 45, people get handsome income from their financial security corpus & wealth then they can spend all monthly income on themselves & family without saving. This spending will boost the economy and give businesses/ profit to others.
- These saved big corpuses will create abundance of money in financial institutions like banks, companies, etc. and help to fund/grow the businesses/ projects / schemes which will create employment opportunities and beneficial for the human.
- The lying corpuses in banks/ financial institutions will work like internal debts on the government which reduces external debt of the country.
- Learning culture, manners and discipline at early stage of life will help them to live life with ease and build a crime-less society.
- If your intention in more on creating something good for community/ people then at a later age people will more inventive and innovative.
These are the few benefits that help an individual and can transform life in a positive direction. Also this will help you to understand the real meaning of life at an early age.
The main objective should always live life with ease, happiness and most importantly with satisfaction which only comes when people help each other with good intentions. This will come when people are satisfied with money or any materialistic things which is distracting from living a meaningful life.
